


of breath and a beating heart

by lesbianjackrackham



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Cuddling, F/M, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Gore, Multi, Road Trips, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-04-28 00:58:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14438016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianjackrackham/pseuds/lesbianjackrackham
Summary: If he had a nickel for every time he’d been jettisoned into space, he’d have, well, enough nickels to put them all in a sock and beat his commanding officer to deathfor jettisoning him into space.--Plus, blood-crazy scientists, road trips, semantics, romantic novel cliches, and reunions.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, one of my first forays into Wolf 359 fandom was a post called "fics i require after the wolf 359 finale' where I demanded a fic where _effiel is sent to earth as planned and works with mr. koudelka to save the world from decima until everyone else makes it home_.
> 
> I have now taken it upon myself to write this fic.

He doesn’t get the code.

Or maybe he does and his Minkowski impression is too far off base to be recognized, but whatever the reason is, Doug is helpless to watch the Hephaestus and Wolf 359 disappear from view.

 _Again_.

If he had a nickel for every time he’d been jettisoned into space, he’d have, well, enough nickels to put them all in a sock and beat his commanding officer to death _for jettisoning him into space_.

“I can’t fucking believe her,” he says, over and over as he wanders the Sol, throwing Cutter’s expensive alcohol at the wall so he doesn’t get tempted to drink it. He destroys as much of the ship as he can manage, from Pryce’s lab and Cutter’s music collection (in _Betamax_ , what the fuck?) to the priceless fucking art on the walls. “I can’t. Fucking. _Believe her_.”

But he can believe her, because Minkowski is a stupid, self-sacrificing, domineering, thinks-she-knows-better-than-everyone person, and while, yeah, she’s right about stuff most of the time, she had no right to do this to him. To decide this for him.

There were so many decisions Doug never got to make for himself. Going to space, because Cutter made it clear it wasn’t really a choice. Decima. Fucking _mind control_. Fucking Bob reverse-probing his brain and Pryce probing his brain. All but one of the times he was jettisoned into space.

He made the decision to stay and save the human race. And Minkowski took that away from him.

In space no one can hear you scream, but goddammit, does he try.

It takes only two weeks to travel the eight light years back home, and it’s almost confusing to see his own solar system come into focus, to come into orbit around a yellow dwarf star instead of red or blue. He cries when he sees Earth because he can’t help it, hulking, wet sobs that nearly leave him breathless.

It lands without his guidance, which is a relief, because it’s not like Minkowski had thought any of that through, and it would have been some sweet irony if he had burned up in the atmosphere instead of dying out in space.

But before he knows it he’s back in Florida, touching down at Canaveral, and when gravity kicks in the weight on him is enormous in the way the artificial stuff on the Sol never was, exhausting him almost immediately. His limbs are gelatinous, and with his hair dangling limply over his eyes he thinks that maybe he should have listened to Minkowski about exercises, and muscle mass, and bone density.

They have to carry him off of the ship.

Thankfully, gravity sickness doesn’t affect his lungs.

He tells the masked Goddard employees about Decima, about Cutter’s kill switch, about Bob and the music, and when they stick him inside of a dark room he just yells louder.

“Take my fucking blood,” he screams from his bed, because he doesn’t have the energy to pound against the walls. “Just test it. It’s already got Decima and some alien mumbo jumbo, so maybe—”

They deliver him meals by tray, thick liquids because he can’t keep anything else down, but he slowly regains the use of his body, new muscles and bone replacing the brittle, and he bruises his hands trying to break down the door, fresh blood welling the surface from alien made marrow.

“Take the blood,” he cries, “take it—”

There’s no way to mark the time except for the cycles of sleep and the movement of food trays. At some point they switch him to solids, and he’s never awake when they feed him, which is the only way he knows they’re watching.

The room is silent, an absoluteness that burns his ears after three years of mechanical hums and clangs, and every time he wakes he jolts out of sleep to the fear that the station shut down for good this time and is hurling them all into the star.

But Hera is there, in his ear soothing him awake, and Lovelace is there to tell him to get his shit together and do his exercises (the ones he barely remembers from training.) Jacobi comes and they play cards, rehashing games from memory, and Doug even talks to Hilbert to try and process everything he remembers about Decima.

Minkowski comes, but he doesn’t talk to her, won’t acknowledge her, and she doesn’t try to talk to him either, just sits with him as he rages a one-man war against the door.

He estimates two weeks in the room when the trays stop coming entirely.

He stops talking after that.

Of all the places he was sure he was going to die, Earth wasn’t high on the list. He’s not entirely sure he didn’t die back on Lovelace’s escape pod, or after hurling himself into Wolf 359, and for some reason his mind decided this would be a better place to die, in a different dark room.

Alone. Again.

Even with his alien blood, two weeks wasn’t enough to recover from all of the shit he’s been through, and without food or water the strength he managed to build up deteriorates quickly. He confines himself to his bed, breathing slowly.

Minkowski yells at him to get up and _do something, Eiffel, I didn’t send you back here to die, damn you_ , but she’s not the boss of him anymore.

He tries to scratch _Doug was here_ into the wall but he doesn’t make a dent, even with his long nails, and oddly enough, it’s a comfort to know that he’s going to die with his hair and fingernails.

He sleeps most of the time, for longer and longer stretches, but now there are no hints to track for how long.

He sleeps most of the time.

Waking up is almost a disappointment.

\---

The quiet is shaken by a knock from outside his room, a dull clanging, and for a groggy moment he thinks he’s back on the Hephaestus.

There’s a mechanical groan and the seams of the wall split open to a plume of dust and stale air rushing out to meet the soft glow of emergency lights. Doug blinks the film away from his eyes to see a tall figure in a full hazmat suit carrying a flashlight and a gun standing in the newly formed doorway. The figure stands there silently for a moment, shining the light across Doug’s body. His ears are still ringing from the intruding noise but he manages to keep his eyes open and tilt his head towards the front of the room.

“Aren’t you a little short for a storm trooper?” He croaks, at least, that’s what he means to say, but his lips and tongue are too thick and dry to form words. His body fights to pull him back into sleep, into the self-induced hibernation and he thinks _no, not yet,_ as the figure walks towards him. He flinches away automatically and the figure pauses, then reaches up to pull off its facemask while a voice somewhere in the distance yells _Dominik, don’t!_

Beneath the mask is a man, and Doug’s eyesight is too blurry to see him properly, but he’s sure it’s a man, dark skinned with glasses and a very nice beard.

“Are you—” Says the man, and the sound of it, of real, human speech hurts his ears. Doug winces, and then winces again at the pain of stretching his face. “Are you Douglas Eiffel?”

“I’m whoever you want me to be,” he mumbles, and loses the fight with the darkness.

\---

He wakes up a few times after that, fitfully, and feels the world move under him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [art](https://tanis-drawings-2point0.tumblr.com/post/173752988490/i-cant-fucking-believe-her-he-says-over-and) by taniushka12


	2. Chapter 2

Doug is all too familiar with the feeling of waking up with needles in his arms, and as he struggles against them he feels hands against his shoulders trying to hold him still.

“It’s alright,” says a light female voice, while a male voice says, “Mr. Eiffel? Are you with us?”

“What—” He breathes, hoarse and chapped. “What—”

“You’re safe,” says the female voice. “I mean, relatively so, but we did watch your tapes...”

“Ellie—”

“It’s true! I mean, if it’s true.”

Doug opens his eyes, but then closes them immediately.

He croaks, “The light—”

“Syd, can you…” Some noises, and then, “Mr. Eiffel, we’ve dimmed the lights. Try opening your eyes again.”

He really doesn’t want to. He misses his dark, quiet room with the dulled pain, not these bursts of it, fresh and bright. There are too many people in this room, breathing, and too many machines humming and clicking. He wants to keep his eyes closed and go back to sleep. Indefinitely.

 _Eiffel!_ Is a stern, familiar shout, and Minkowski's voice rattles through him, cool and sudden. He’s startled enough to reach out blindly, as if she’s waiting nearby to clasp his hand.

But she’s not.

He opens his eyes.

Slowly this time, blinking away the crust from his eyelashes, and it takes a moment for the shapes in the room to come into focus. There are three people standing in front of him looking very worried and very excited all at once. One of them, a petite dark haired woman, steps forward to adjust the needle in his right arm.

“IV,” she says, smoothing out the tape. “I’m Dr. Ellie Gold. I also took some of your blood, but not a lot because you needed most of it to not die. In the video you said I could.”

“Ellie…” The man with long grey hair scolds her gently. The third figure has stepped out of sight, but it doesn’t seem intentional, because if Doug could manage to move his head he’d be able to seem them.

“He did!” She insists. “You have—it’s really fascinating blood. I have a lot of questions about your blood. When you get a little better, I want to take more of your blood. I’m not a vampire.”

“Ellie,” says the third figure, and Doug still can’t turn his head enough to see them, but the voice is male, with a soft, lilting British accent. “The blood is very exciting, I know, but can we…”

Ellie waves her hand and goes to off to the side of the room, presumably to play with his blood. Which is fine. Technically, he did give permission.

The grey haired man drags over a stool and sits at the end of the bed, just off to the right where Doug can see him. He pulls a small notebook out of his denim jacket, as well as a pair of small round glasses that he slides up his nose.

“You’re Douglas Eiffel?” He asks, clicking a pen.

“Yeah. Just, Doug. Who are...”

“Doug, can you tell me where you’ve been the past few years?”

“I’ve… really, who are you?”

“We’re scientists,” says Ellie. _Shit_ , he thinks, and struggles to sit up.

“Are you with Goddard?” He asks, eyes wide as Ellie shoves a pillow behind his back.

“What?” She makes a face. “No.”

“Some of us are scientists,” says the grey-haired man. “I’m a journalist. So is Dom.”

“Dominik,” says the British accent, stepping back into view, and Doug jolts as he recognizes him as the man in the hazmat suit, the one that found him. The man’s wearing a sweater that must have been nice, once upon a time, and aside from the dark circles under his eyes that match the rest of the group he looks more put together than the rest of them, tidy in a way the other two aren’t. “He’s Syd.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t— Sydney Thatcher. Formerly with the _New York Times_ , but only because we don’t know if the _Times_ still exists.”

“Fuck,” says Doug, “how long have I…”

“Based on the video we found, it’s been a month since you landed back on Earth,” says Dominik. Doug clears his throat and tries to shift against the pillow. It’s in a really weird position and he still can’t move his arms enough to adjust it.

“Well…” he says, “there’s your answer. I was in space and now I’m here.”

“Doug—”

“A month…” He muses, and then clears his throat. One month. Not the most time he’s ever lost, but— “What happened out there? Did Decima… I mean, how many...” Dominick and Syd look at each other, and Doug’s heart drops.

“The reports are… thin,” says Syd, carefully. “But. But estimates…”

“Tell me.”

“Two billion dead.” And just like that he can’t see anymore. Or breathe. Or—

Distantly, he hears the machines beeping loudly and the people in the room scrambling, yelling. He feels them grab at him, and he can’t move his body but he’s probably moving his body because they’re holding him down, his legs, his arms, and there’s a weight on his chest, a grip on his lungs, and he can’t breathe.

He can’t breathe.

_Eiffel!_

“Shit,” he chokes, gulping for breath. “ _Shit_.”

“Doug, please hold still…” Ellie, he thinks. There’s a pinch in his arm as she reinserts the IV he didn’t even notice he’d pulled out. He got blood on the blanket. What a waste.

“Hold… two _billion_.” A hand brushes against his forehead, sweeping sweaty hair away from his face.

“I know,” murmurs Dominik from above him. “I know.”

“Fuck,” says Doug, and he’s not going to cry in front of these strangers, but based on the look on their faces, it looks like he already has. He feels damp, like he’s sweated out the entire IV, and he wants a fucking shower but he doesn’t think he’d be able to stand. Maybe a sponge bath? Don’t hospitals do sponge baths?

But they’re not in a hospital. Everything in the small exam room is carefully labeled with a bold GF, from the lab coat hanging on the door to the pile of white boxes stacked in the corner.

Also, he’s only just realizing that he’s wearing only a hospital gown under the thin blanket. Which means someone in this room undressed him. Where did they even find a hospital gown? Fucking Goddard.

“And that’s not the…”

“ _Ellie!_ ”

“What,” pants Doug, struggling away from Dominik’s hands. “Two billion people are dead and that’s not the worst part? Tell me what’s happening!” Syd makes a face at Dominik, and Doug can’t see the other man’s response.

“Doug, we don’t…”

“There was a mutation in the virus,” says Ellie, duller than the peppy tone she’d been speaking in. “No one’s sure what caused it, but for some people the symptoms…”

“I’m familiar with them,” he says, flatly.

“It changed them. It made them… angry. The infection started in the brain, rather than the lungs, and triggered something within the limbic system. They started healing rapidly, which caused tumors and other mutations, and they got stronger, and now they’re…” And Doug starts wheezing, shaking with laughter, because of course. Of course.

“Zombies,” Doug finishes, because his life is a science fiction novel. Ellie shakes her head.

“No, they’re not undead.”

“Are they alive?”

“...Not entirely.”

“Do they hunger for human flesh or brains?” Silence from the crowd. He’ll take that as a yes. “Then they’re zombies. Do not go with The Walking Dead, ‘ _oh no for some reason we can’t call the things hungering for our brains zombies_ ’ nonsense. They’re zombies. I need this win.”

“We’ve been calling them—”

“ _Zom. Bies._ Zombies.”

“Zombies,” says Syd, strained.

“Zombies,” Doug mutters, closing his eyes. “That son of a bitch.”

“Who?” He cracks one eye open, and sees Ellie and Syd peering down at him. Dominik is still somewhere behind him, out of sight, but he can feel him hovering and listening just as intently.

“I knew—slash was the lab rat of the guy who created this mess. He was trying to use Decima to save lives, of all ironies, and was using secret human trials to do it. Secret to the subjects at least. Goddard knew all about it. And you know, I always wondered why they cared so much about his research and let him play around like that. I could never make the connection between Decima and aliens, and yet here we are.” He yawns loudly and feels the strain against his chest. “Fuck you, Hilbert.”

“This was on the Hephaestus?”

“Yep. I’m not even patient zero—he killed a whole bunch of people during the first Hephaestus mission I’m just the only one that made it, because of my magic alien blood. Speaking of my blood, how did you even know to...”

“Goddard Futuristics was abandoned after the outbreak,” says Dominik, who at some point had pulled up another chair next to Eiffel’s bedside. “We— Syd and I were in DC at the time, and heard about rumors connecting them to it… I had been investigating them already so we decided to come down and see what we could learn. We picked up Ellie and the others along the way. Most of the base had been destroyed, but there were still security recordings.” He pauses. “Of you.”

Doug yawns again and blinks blearily at him.

“Well, ‘dumb luck’s’ my middle name.” Dominik purses his lips and starts fidgeting with the blanket on Doug’s bed. “What, don’t tell me there’s also werewolves and fairies running around outside. I’m still not convinced you’re all not vampires just drinking my blood.”

“Mr. Eiffel—”

“Doug.”

“Doug,” he says. “I’m— My wife— Your commander—” And Doug, as sore and tired as he is, sits straight up in bed.

“You’re Minkowski’s husband? Holy shit.”

“Yes, I—”

“Look, I know this is not the time for this, but I am _so fucking mad at her_.”


	3. Chapter 3

There’s no way to nap, after that.

He tells them the whole story, filling in the blanks from his surprisingly detailed, deranged ranting caught on the Goddard Futuristics security system. They pull in the rest of the group for it, two more women and a man whose names he forgets immediately, just counts them off as doctors two, three, and four.

He takes them all the way through, from the first radio signals through Bob’s reverse probing. He’s careful with any details about Minkowski, and when he gets to the end of the story and his non-consensual trip back to Earth, Dominik leaves the room and Doug stops talking, exhausted. He sees Ellie and the other doctors vibrating with more questions, but Syd manages to steer them out of the room as well.

“You should get some rest,” he says, as the others disappear through the door.

“Probably,” says Doug, but the fatigue is already starting to win. “Is Dominik…” He trails off, unsure how to phrase the question.

“Almost a year ago,” says Syd, “my friend Dom calls me and says, _I don’t think my wife’s dead_. And I think, oh no, better head down to DC to make sure this poor guy doesn’t kill himself. Because we all saw the footage of the explosion. I was at the damn funeral. But when I get there he shows me a call log from the office with this completely untraceable number, and he tells me his assistant spoke to some crazy woman claiming to be Renée Minkowski.”

Syd takes his glasses off, folds them up and then taps them against the end of the bed, and Doug realizes that the man is much younger than he looks, even against the silver hair and the lines on his face. There’s a tightness in the stretch of his skin, a weariness in his stance, and a pinched thinning to his wrists that makes him think of the phrase _bone tired._

“The Goddard Futuristics records he had started to put together were sketchy at best, and I thought maybe, _maybe_ there was some kind of cover up, engine failure, or— we had no idea. We weren’t even close. And then a month ago, a shuttle touches down in Canaveral.”

“He thought I was going to be her.”

“I have no idea what he thought,” says Syd, and Doug can tell that he’s lying. “But you being here… it’s a lot. It means a lot.”

“I get it,” says Doug, because he does. He’d be disappointed he wasn’t Minkowski too. Hell, he can’t think of anyone who’d be excited to see him crash down to Earth. Except maybe Ellie, and that’s really only about his blood.

He must be making some sort of face because Syd reaches over and squeezes his foot, kind of awkwardly.

“Get some rest,” he says again, and Doug yawns obligingly, lets his eyes fall closed. “We’re all really glad you’re here.”

Doug’s asleep before he can formulate a response, but just thinks, _sure_.

\---

He gets his strength back surprisingly quickly, under the careful watch of four very handsy doctors who are just as obsessed with his blood as they are his stories from space. They have him up and walking after only two days, and he’s able to shower by himself with the help of a chair.

It’s glorious, washing the filth from his body for the first time in too fucking long and just letting the water run over him. There’s only half a second where he flashbacks to nearly drowning in space. It feels dumb, because it’s not like that’s the most traumatic thing to happen to him in the past four years, but he still finds himself curled up on the title floor and a doctor named Boomer standing over him.

(The other doctors reintroduced themselves after his nap—Vera Martinez, an older pediatrician; Natalie Yao, a med student from Tampa; and a virologist named Boomer.

“Boomer?”

“Yeah.”

“Dr. Boomer?” The man shrugs.

“It’s the apocalypse, man. I wanted a cool nickname.”)

He and Boomer don’t talk about the incident in the bathroom, but he’s sure that he tells the others. They have a lot of notes on him. The scientists and the journalists both.

Speaking of.

Dominik hadn’t come back after the first day, and if Doug were able to walk more than ten steps without keeling over, he’d have gone after him by now.

Not that Doug knows what to say to him.

_Sorry I’m not your wife_ , doesn’t seem like it’ll cover it.

He spends a few days sleeping and getting his blood drawn, and listening to the four doctors talk about his blood. (They’re usually all in his room at once, like they’re all worried he’ll say or do something that they’ll miss, and it doesn’t make him feel like less of a science experiment but at least this time he gave permission first?)

“The combination of the Decima virus and the alien blood is… well, it’s extraordinary,” says Martinez, who insists on being called by her last name even though Doug struggles not to call her _Doctor_ or _ma’am_. It doesn’t help that she keeps patting him on the leg and trying to feed him even though his arms work now, minus the billion needles they keep sticking in him.

“Uh huh,” he mumbles, eyes closed. He’s not planning to fall asleep again, but it’s not like they really need his input at this juncture.

“God,” says Natalie. “I’d do anything to get a sample of… Lovelace was her name?”

“Yeah.”

“Her blood must be… it’s alien and human all at once, and with the regenerative qualities—”

“And of course the—”

“Yes, the radiation exposure.”

“Well,” Doug yawns, “you’ll get a chance when they get here.” At the following silence, he opens his eyes and finds all four of them standing over his bed. Which isn’t a new move, but the shared wide-eyed curiosity is slightly less hopeful than usual.

“What do you mean?” Ellie asks. Doug clears his throat and shifts higher on the bed.

“Well, it took me maybe two weeks to get back to Earth on that super fast ship, and then it took what, another two weeks for the virus to—” He clears his throat again, and sees that at some point, Syd had slipped into the room. “And then another two weeks to find me. So, assuming they were able to take back the Urania—that was the other Goddard ship—they should be landing sometime in the next…”

“Doug, they… we can’t assume that,” says Syd, shaking his head. Doug just frowns at him.

“Yes we can.”

“We can’t assume they made it. The virus—“

“Fine, okay,” he says, raising his voice, and he can hear his heart rate monitor start to trill. “They screwed the pooch on that one, but that doesn’t mean—“

“Doug, please. There’s no way...”

“Listen," he says, yelling now, because they're not listening correctly. Why the hell aren't they listening to him? "I lived through a _few_ impossible situations because of the Commander, so don’t tell me that they… that they…” Doug closes his eyes and shakes his head. He can't look at any of them right now.

He didn’t realize how much he’d been holding onto this hope, that Minkowski sent him because he would have just gotten in the way and that she and the others were right behind him. That by some miracle, whether it Bob or sheer Minkowski stubbornness, their suicide mission wasn’t so crazy. That this was just another ridiculous thing they would survive.

That they would win.

“It can’t just be me,” he says, very quietly, to hide the tremble in his voice. He’s clutching his fists together so hard that his nails are digging into his palms, and the pain is a distant, steady thing. “It can’t be me.”

“Doug…”

He shakes his head. He doesn’t open his eyes. If he was in a movie, this would be the moment where they all burst in to tell him to get up and stop whining, that they’re here and everything’s going to be alright now, that they missed him most of all, Scarecrow.

“Why the fuck is it me?” His voice cracks, and he doesn’t open his eyes.

\---

He’s not sure how long he sits there, eyes squeezed shut and softly crying, because there’s still a part of him that thinks that as long as he keeps his eyes closed there’s a chance that his crew will come through the door. He’s come up with hundreds of scenarios by now, thinking maybe each slight variation will trigger it. Any minute now.

“Doug?”

Nope. Not listening. Not until—

_Doug?_

His eyes snap to the door, and his sight is blurry from the strain but she’s not there. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but the punch to his gut hurts all the same. She’s not going to be there. None of them are. No matter how many voices are in his head.

Instead, the room is empty except for Dominik, who is seated in a chair close to the bed, his hands resting on the blanket near Doug’s legs, and he wonders how long Dominik’s been there for, and how Doug’s managed not to notice him. Dominik’s in the same sweater from the first day, blue and a little threadbare. Either it’s a favorite or clothing is in short supply in the apocalypse.

“Doug,” says Dominik, weaving his fingers together and pulling them off the bed. Even though they weren’t directly touching him, Doug misses their warmth. “How are you doing?”

After a beat, Doug says, “Shitty. One of the four doctors you brought down here couldn’t have been a psychologist?” Dominik smiles, a soft curl of his lips.

“Next time,” he says. “In the meantime, if you’d like to talk—”

“No,” he says immediately, and Dominik looks taken aback. “Not that. I mean, I wouldn’t want to— to you. Not like you wouldn’t, but. You don’t have to be polite.”

“Polite?”

“Look, I know you’re mad that I’m here and Minkowski isn’t—”

“I’m not mad,” says Dominik, and when Doug opens his mouth to protest, something about the other man’s face stops him. There’s an openness to him, a soft sadness in his eyes, but no anger. No resentment.

“You’re… not?”

“No,” says Dominik, closing his eyes briefly, and then looking right at Doug. “I can’t be. Because—that’s Renée. Of course she stayed back to fight. Of course she gave it her all. That’s the woman I fell in love with. That’s the woman I married.”

“Yeah, that’s her alright,” Doug sighs, and swallows around the lump in his throat. “Also, I want to point out that I _tried_ to stay back and fight. Hell, I led team _let’s go down swinging_. _She_ was the one who trapped me on the shuttle and sent me back here.”

That smile again, a twitch of lips beneath his beard. Dominik rests his hands back on the bed and taps lightly at the blanket.

“Doug, may I ask—why you?” Doug laughs. “Oh I don’t mean—you said there were others, Daniel and Isabel?”

“Yeah,” says Doug. “No, I get it. It’s kinda the eternal question _why me_ for pretty much all things in my life. And the answer is usually because I did something stupid. Uh. But for this— for the Commander, it’s because of my— my daughter.” It hangs there for a moment, and Doug looks at the door so he doesn’t have to look at Dominik.

“You have a—”

“Anne,” he says, and hates that the word is sour on his tongue, like he doesn’t have any claim to say it. “Yeah. I— last I knew they were in Texas. Her and her mother.”

“Your wife?”

“My ex. Not wife.” Doug reaches up and rubs his head. His hair is the longest it’s been since cryo, and he briefly wonders if he should ask for a trim. Maybe for his beard, at least. Dominik’s looks nice. Clearly someone has a trimmer. He looks back at Dominik finally, and a different question slips out. “Is there— no. I— never mind.”

“What is it?”

“Is there a way to find… I can’t— I really don’t want to if— but if there’s a... a chance…”

“To find them?” Doug nods, and blinks back the stinging in his eyes. He feels guilty for asking this of him, knowing that he’s sitting here a sad replacement for Dominik’s own family, but the man is looking at him so gently that he can’t help himself. “Where in Texas?”

“Just outside Houston. Spring Valley.” Dominik nods and then, after a moment of thought, reaches across the bed and uncurls Doug’s fingers from where they’ve returned to clenching into fists, smooths out the indents he made into his palms.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” Doug says, looking at his hands that are in Dominik’s hands. He doesn’t understand the gesture, of Dominik’s ability to reach over and comfort Doug, of all people, but he doesn’t dare move. He wants to keep sitting here like this, Dominik’s touch a buoy to the waves of grief and worry. “And if it’s…” He trails off. “Just tell me you couldn’t find them, okay? I—”

“Okay,” says Dominik, gently squeezing Doug's hands, and Doug lets out a shaky breath.

He takes another breath in, deep and sure, and then another, and Dominik keeps holding his hands.


	4. Chapter 4

“Kole— say it again.”

“Koudelka”

“No, slower.”

“Koudelka.”

“Kooko— Kolulo—”

“Koudelka,” Dominik says and Doug groans, knocking his head back against the wall. He’s finally healthy enough that he doesn’t have to live in the medical wing anymore, so they moved him to what’s essentially a dorm room inside of a Goddard auxiliary building, and he doesn’t want to think about who lived there before him, but whoever it was left behind a closet full of clothes and mostly untouched toiletries, so he’s grateful to them. The others are in similar rooms down the hall, though Ellie and crew spend most of their time in the labs and Syd spends most of his time trying to make them go back to their rooms to sleep.

And shouldn’t be familiar but it is, this push and pull of overworked people trying to do their best. It’s a little disconcerting but he’s getting used to it, this new reality, even if he’s still looking around corners and jumping at shadows and hearing people who aren’t really there. But that’s mostly par for the course in The Many Adventures of Doug Eiffel. He’s basically Quantum Leap’s Scott Bakula, except not as good natured or handsome.

Meanwhile, Dominik is both nice and handsome enough to be a time traveling do-gooder. And Doug’s not really sure why he keeps hanging around him, but apparently there’s not a lot for a journalist to do during the apocalypse after you find the Deus Ex Blood-Sack. Not that he’s complaining. There’s not a lot for a blood-sack to do during the apocalypse after the daily needle pokes are done.

Pure curiosity has him exploring the Goddard facilities, but it’s honestly not as interesting as he thought. There’s a cafeteria where they eat the MREs someone found in the storeroom, a large laboratory he’s intimately familiar with, and dozens of nondescript offices and conference rooms, all stacked together in the weirdest building setup he's ever seen. Most of the floors are still locked down under a code he’s sure only Crazy and Crazier knew, and the docs have already taken the more interesting science experiments back to the main lab to study or dispose.

Fun fact: even Goddard Futuristics’ Earth-based scientists were growing gigantic bugs.

The exhaustion still nags him sometimes, because magic alien blood isn’t perfect, which means he spends long stretches in his room resting and reading and playing cards and trying to say Dominik’s last name correctly.

“Shit,” Doug says, tugging at his hair. “I want to get this.” Dominik just smiles at him. They’re both sitting on his bed because Doug thought it would be less awkward than having Dominik sit at his bedside like when he was still recovering, but it’s not. For a guy he’s only known for a week and a half, it’s weirdly intimate, part Babysitter’s Club sleepover, part _would it be weird if I asked him to cuddle, but in a manly, platonic way, because I don’t know if we’re friends yet but he looks really warm._

“You're alright. Just call me Dominik.”

“Nuh uh,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m going to get this. Did you know it took me three years to say Minkowski correctly?”

“Really?” Doug clears his throat.

“ _Minkowwwwwski_ ,” he drawls, drawing the word out until Dominik starts to laugh.

“Oh god. How did she—”

“Oh, she was busy being mad at me for _so_ many other things,” says Doug, a little wistfully.

“She didn’t correct you?”

“Ah,” says Doug. “Yeah. She did. And Hera corrected me. Even Hilbert, for the apocalypse causing asshole he was, corrected me. I, uh, was kind of a jerk to her in the beginning. And the middle. And in the end, honestly.”

“And still, she sent you home.”

“Yeah, well. If someone else had a long lost daughter they probably would have gotten my spot,” he mutters. “But that’s not. I don’t know.”

“Doug…” Dominik says, and squints his eyes like he’s trying to come up with the right words. But Doug doesn’t really want to know what Dominik’s planning to ask, so he forces out a yawn and cracks his neck around his shoulders. “Oh, do you need to—“

“No, no,” Doug says, yawning for real this time. “If I don’t stay awake I’ll be all fucked up later. Cards?”

“Alright. Gin rummy?”

“If you remind me how to play, yeah.”

\---

At dinner a night later Doug nearly trips into Vera as she rushes through the door, and he just manages to duck out of the way before he splatters tomato sauce on her and the floor. They all eat together when they can—the apocalypse is the kind of thing that encourages group meals—but no one begrudges anyone some alone time, or, as is the case for most of the doctors, science time.

“They evacuated Houston,” she says as he sets his tray down, and it takes him a moment to register what she’s saying.

“They… are you sure? How do you know?”

“There’s an automatic radio broadcast. I was just able to find the right frequency.”

“Hold up. You have a radio you’re just now telling me about it?”

“It doesn’t transmit out. There was an… incident with a river on the way here.” Vera looks at Boomer, who scowls.

“The bridge collapsed,” he mutters, almost to himself, and Doug wants to hear that story, he really does, but—

“I can still look at it! I’m kind of… the best radio guy in the galaxy? Wait, what else did the broadcast say?”

“There’s a government run refugee camp just inside Texas A&M University and they’re telling everyone to go there.”

“Holy shit,” Doug breathes, because that’s— “Kate was a grad student at A&M. Something with plants— she always called it bio-hacking, I don’t really remember, but... That’s gotta be a sign, right? Maybe she and Anne moved closer, and then they were right there when it all went down? Hell, Goddard wrote them a nice check. She probably moved right next door.” He knows he’s rambling, but he can’t help himself or the fractured, hopeful smile skittering across his face. “This is— this is amazing. Thank you. How do we— When can we— How does this work, we go, or I go, or, I don’t know. You don’t need to come with me.”

“Doug,” says Syd from across the table. “Hold on a second. We don’t know anything about the journey.”

“It’s really not that far. Just a few states away.”

“The roads could be— and I'm sorry, but there's no way to know for sure if they’re there.”

“So? So? You all trekked down here for a fucking story when newspapers don’t even exist anymore! This is my— she’s is my daughter. This is my family.”

“Doug—”

“Okay,” says Dominik.

“Dom…”

“Syd, what—”

“We can’t—”

“What, are we trapping him in here? Locking him up like a prison I? Like Goddard did?”

“Of course not. But Dom, please be realistic. There’s no way to know for sure—”

“There was no way to know about Renée until we got here, but you came anyway,” Dominik yells, and Syd blanches. “How the hell is this any different?”

“Dom…” Syd says, and Dominik shakes his head.

“I’ll go with him. And we’ll take Boomer, he has some military experience.”

“No, he should stay and work on the virus.”

“Nobody has to go with me,” says Doug. “Just give me a truck and a gun and I’ll be fine.”

“Doug, it’s really not safe to go alone…”

“Do you mean, _it’s dangerous to go alone_?”

“...That’s what I said.”

“Really? Legend of Zelda? None of you nerds? Okay. But really, when I say I’ve done more dangerous things alone before, _I’m not exaggerating_. I’ll be fine. And you can take as much blood as you want before I go, you know, just in case.” They’re all staring at him now, and god, they really keep doing that, don’t they? Come watch Traumatized Boy, the shittiest Avenger, try and hold himself together while ruining the fun for everyone else.

“Where’s the radio?” He asks Vera, maybe a little too harshly, because she startles and stammers so he just says, “never mind” and takes off, out of the room before anyone can stop him.

\---

The radio is in one of the smaller labs, a small, handheld thing that Vera somehow managed to attach to the large antenna pointing out of Goddard’s main building. He holes himself in the room and fiddles with it, trying to clear out the circuits and circumvent the remaining water damage. But the longer he works on it, the more it becomes clear that it's never going to work the same again.

It figures. He can track down aliens, but he can’t call Texas.

But Texas can call him, and honestly, he has no idea why they can get a signal this strong on such a shitty piece of equipment, but there it is, over and over again: _ATTENTION. ATTENTION. This is the Emergency Broadcast System..._

“Doug?” He nearly drops the radio.

“Shit,” says Doug, as Dominik comes in and closes the door behind him. He pulls up a second chair to the desk, and Doug, almost out of habit, scoots out of the way to make room for him.

“I talked to Syd. We’re going to retrofit one of the Goddard vehicles, and once that’s all set we can leave. It shouldn’t take more than a few days.” Dominik’s smiling, like they’re planning a trip to Chuck E Cheese, almost sparkling with excitement about the thought of trekking across the country with him through Zombieland.

“I told you I don’t need—”

“And I told you it’s not about need. I want to help you.”

“But— why? Seriously, who the fuck are you? Like, where did you even come from?”

“Well, I was born to a Czech father and Indian mother and raised in London. I got my undergraduate in Journalism. Renée and I met in Paris when she was stationed there.” That’s not in the same universe of what Doug meant, but the small, bright smile on Dominik’s face is worth investigating further.

“Tell me about baby Minkowski,” he says in lieu of running out of the room. “How did you meet?”

“Actually, I was the baby. I was still in University, traveling, and she was furloughed from the Air Force. She was applying to NASA and I was still spotty, but…” he trails off, briefly closing his eyes and smiling. “It was like something out of a movie. I finished school, contracted out with the Globe, and then followed her around the world. We got married that summer.”

“That sounds… nice.”

“It really was.” Dominik opens his eyes and tilts his head at Doug. ”What about you?”

“Uh, white on white, though my mother never told me who my dad was so I could be… I don’t know. Probably not. Boston until I was 17, then Afghanistan, then Texas... then Afghanistan, then Texas, and then Texas federal penitentiary, then Wolf 359, then… Florida, I guess.” He clears his throat and, when Dominik nods for him to continue, picks at a bandage on his arm. “Kate and I met after my second tour. Well, met again, because apparently I was wasted when we met the first time. It was good for about five minutes, and then it was a shitshow but neither of us wanted to break it off. Then she did, and then like two weeks later she tells me she’s pregnant and she keeping it. I sober up in time to meet Anne. And... We had a good few years. Really good years. And then…”

“You don’t have to—”

“No, if you’re going to Lord of the Rings my ass to Texas, you should probably hear it all. In case you want to throw me to the horde on the way there. Uh, long story—” He cringes. “Shit, not that, that phrase is a— never mind.”

“Doug, you really don’t have to—”

“The charges were child endangerment and kidnapping because I ran off with my daughter and drove drunk and now she’s deaf. That’s my story.” He stands up abruptly, enough that the chair rolls back and hits the door. The room’s too small to pace but he tries it anyway, steps over to the far wall and then turns and walks back, all the while not looking at Dominik.

“Doug…”

“I was going to lose custody. It’s not an excuse, god knows I know it’s not, but that’s why— I was terrified of losing her. My one good thing. And I—“

“Doug…”

“Please don’t. Say anything. Just. If you still want to help me find her— and I get it if you don’t, but either way…” Doug stops pacing close to the door and just stares at the completely unassuming white walls that used to hold literal supervillains. 

“How did you get from…”

“Goddard scooped me up. And honestly, now that I think about it, it’s hella creepy that Cutter himself came to get me. I still don’t know if he expected me to… or if I was just a semi-qualified petri dish.” He leans forward and rests his head against the wall, trying to catch his breath. “Look, I was not a good person. And you could still make the argument that I’m a waste of time, piece of shit, but—”

“Stop that. Doug, why…”

“Don’t, okay? Don’t— I survived. I’m dealing. It’s... fine.”

It’s not fine. Both of them know that. But Dominik stands up anyway, crosses the short distance to rest a hand at the center of his back.

Doug deflates with an unconscious shiver that Dominik mistakes for discomfort because he pulls away, and Doug barely controls the soft whimper his body makes at the loss.

“I’m still going with you,” says Dominik.

“You’ve known me for a week.”

“I’ve had to make tougher decisions in less time.”

“Well…” Doug tells the wall, “fine. I did warn you.”

“Doug, look at me.” He doesn’t. “If this makes you feel any better… getting you to your daughter is one of… Renée wanted this to happen. So I’m going to make it happen.”

“You don’t—” Doug says, finally turning around and frowning at Dominik. “I could have made all of that shit up. You don’t know—”

“Did you?”

“I— what?

“Did you lie about any of it?”

“For once in my life, no.”

“Well,” says Dominik, smiling. “That settles it.”

“I’m just saying, don’t go around trusting all the guys that fall out of the sky.”

“How about just the one?”

Well. What the hell is he supposed to say to that?


	5. Chapter 5

Two hours on the road and there’s nothing on the radio. That’s because there’s no one out there to put music on the radio, but end of the world aside, it’s making for a silent as fuck road trip.

The car doesn’t even take CDs, cassettes, or an aux cord, because Goddard Futuristics is evil _and_ boring, so there’s no point in even scrounging something up. At this point, Doug would trade the Goddard Futuristics branded SUV (and the Goddard branded flack jackets and the Goddard branded jumpsuits that he did his best to cut the logo off of) for music of any kind. Hell, he’d take an NPR pledge drive.

Instead there’s the silence of a nearly deserted world, abandoned buildings and cars, and every so often he spots the remains of what might have been a person, a peripheral shadow, a stretch of something folded across the earth. Dominik is at the wheel because Doug hasn’t driven a car in nearly five years, so there’s plenty of time to scan the Brave New World from the passenger seat, bulletproof one way glass and that locked in feeling that reminds him of the shuttle and being less than an inch from death.

He rolls down the window. Somehow, it’s better.

His arms are sore and bruised from the gallons of blood the docs had taken over their last few days at Goddard, along with all kinds of bodily samples that they seemed all too happy to receive. (Natalie wanted a piece of his liver, but thankfully everyone shot her down.) Doug’s pretty sure they could clone him at this point, which would be the second time that’s happened to him. This year. That is, if Bob’s Face/Off bullshit counts as cloning, but really, if he thinks about it too carefully, he might go even crazier.

(He’s not hallucinating Minkowski anymore, and he doesn’t know if that’s a sign that he’s getting better or worse. And what does it say about his sanity that he misses her voice echoing in his imagination? Probably nothing great.)

Meanwhile, there’s Dominik.

Renée’s husband.

Doug’s self-aware enough to admit he’s not discouraging the attention, too selfish not to drink in the comforting touches, Dominik’s warm hand on his shoulder or elbow, or the soft, sparkling smiles that he must be importing from another fucking universe, one where the world isn’t collapsing around them. Dominik is a life raft and Doug is Kate Winslet, barely holding on and willing to let DiCaprio freeze to death.

And now they’re sitting next to each other for the next twenty-plus hours.

They take back roads north to avoid the mess of abandoned cars littering the highways, and thankfully the vehicle off-roads well because the routes Dominik takes them on are just as crowded, cars left to bake in the sun like husks of cicadas in the summertime. The silence is almost hallucinatory, like that scene in Inception where they’re building cities with no one to live in them.

Three hours in and he hasn’t seen a zombie.

Two more hours and they’re still in Florida, and in Gainesville they stop to siphon gas and scrounge for guns and anything else useful like food or water. They raid a gas station where Doug is unable to resist a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and then a Waffle House where the only things that haven’t gone bad is the flour and syrup.

“Was it like this on the drive down?” Doug asks when they’re back in the car. He has an assortment of gas station junk food on his lap, and his fingers are already bright orange from Cheetos dust. “This empty?”

“There were… more a month ago.”

“More people?”

“More dead,” says Dominik, still looking ahead at the road. “From the virus.”

“So what—” And then he remembers. “Right.”

He’s not sure how he would have reacted to scores of bodies on the road, and the fact that a zombie cleaning crew had plowed through is a sickening comfort. Maybe it gave the survivors a better chance to get to shelter. Maybe it gave Kate and Anne a chance.

He doesn’t know how to process this hope, this near certainty that they made it. That neither of them got sick, and that neither of them were infected with the virus his body helped incubate. That neither of them turned into monsters, or got caught by monsters.

If Doug Eiffel can survive… everything, then so did they.

The universe doesn’t make any sense, otherwise.

“Want a Cheeto?” He asks Dominik, pushing aside the solemn silence.

“No, thank you.”

“Are you more of a sweets guy?”

“No, I— You know, I’ve never actually had a Cheeto.” Doug blinks at him.

“What the fuck. _Why?_ Haven’t you lived in America for years now?”

“I’ve had cheese puffs, aren’t those—”

“What, from one of those giant barrels? No way. How dare you insult the great Chester Cheetah associating him with that mediocre snack? I bet you like Red Vines more than Twizzlers too, you sick fuck.” Dominik smiles.

“I like black licorice.”

“Oh, well, then you can’t be trusted at all. Did Minkowski know you were this evil?”

“Doug—”

“Here.” He waves the bag right in front of Dominik’s face. “Come on. It won’t hurt you.”

“Doug, I’m driving!”

“And you have to keep both hands on the wheel? That is literally the most Minkowski thing you’ve ever said. Fine.” Doug reaches into the bag and pulls out a Cheeto. “Eat this,” he says, putting it up to Dominik’s lips. Dominik glances over at him for a second, and then snaps the snack from Doug’s fingers with his teeth. Doug watches him chew with a sick fascination. “Well?”

“Is it supposed to taste like cheese?”

“No, it’s supposed to taste like artificial cheese. They’re two very distinct flavors, like banana and banana Laffy Taffys. Or raspberries and blue raspberry.”

“It’s stuck in my teeth.”

“See? The perfect snack for the end of the world. You’ll never go hungry.”

“I have no idea if I liked that or not,” Dominik muses. “Can I try another one?” Doug holds up two Cheetos to Dominik’s mouth, and when Dominik tries to take them Doug accidentally brushes his fingers against his lips. Or Dominik accidentally brushes his lips against Doug’s fingers. Either way, the Cheetos drop into Dominik’s lap.

“Whoops,” says Doug. He reaches for the fallen snack, but then stops himself. They’ve slipped between Dominik’s legs, and Doug has one hand on the bag and another hovering just at Dominik’s knee. “Ah—“

“You can… leave them,” says Dominik, hands still on the steering wheel. “These pants have seen worse.” Doug nods and ducks his head in a futile attempt to hide the blush creeping up his neck.

He rolls up the Cheetos bag; the crinkle is deafeningly loud in the quiet car. His hands are still covered in orange dust and he wonders if it would be weird to lick his fingers. The fingers that were just against Dominik’s lips.

He wipes his hand on his jumpsuit instead.

“What about Twinkies?”

“I’ve had a Twinkle. Not a fan.”

“Slim Jim?”

“Number one apocalypse approved protein source. Number one journalist approved protein source as well.”

“And?”

“They’re disgusting.”

\---

They spot the first horde just before Tallahassee, driving through a suburb looking for another gas station. The stench is unexpected, a sweaty sickness and the sour of spilled blood and undigested meat. And the sound: the slap of feet and the low wails growing louder as Dominik hurries him back into the car yelling, “come on, come on.”

He doesn’t have to tell Doug twice.

Doug watches them as Dominik peels the car away. Fifteen or so— Well, people isn’t the right descriptor but they look like people, no rotting flesh or missing limbs. Just a synchronized shuffle and stiff jerk of limbs to distinguish them from afar, and Doug really, really doesn’t want to get close enough to see what they look like, or how closely they wear their humanity. If they’re just people sick with hunger or if the hunger is all that’s left.

He touches the gun in his shoulder holster and watches them disappear from view.

“Huh,” says Doug, when they’re far enough down the road that some of the tension leeches out of Dominik’s shoulders. “So.”

“Yeah,” says Dominik.

“I expected more… you know.” Dominik lets out a short breath and adjusts his hands on the wheel, letting the blood rush back to his fingers.

“It… was hard to tell, at first, who was infected like this because the symptoms started off the same. It was the ones that seemed to get better, that…” He trails off and grips the wheel again.

It’s a new look for Dominik, and Doug doesn’t know what to do about it. He doesn’t Dominik like this. Nervous. Fearful. Flappable.

“And the docs really think they can make a cure?”

“If not a cure, then a vaccine for the rest of us.”

“Do you think they can do it?” Dominik just looks over at him, and Doug gets it. It’s the same thing that sent Dominik to Florida in the first place, and set them driving them halfway across the country on another foolhardy mission.

It’s all they’ve got.

\---

It’s impossible to drive at night with so many streetlights down, so they pull the car off to a Motel 6 in Alabama before it gets too dark and silently check the property for danger or dead. A few rooms have remains of the latter, already picked clean by another wandering horde, but the rest of the place is empty enough that Dominik deems it safe for the night.

They find a room with two queen beds on the first floor, and Dominik pulls the car right in front of the door, which, when Doug points out the fire hazard, the other man just laughs.

“I’ve lined up the windows,” he says, pulling up the curtains. “Worst case is we go through.”

“That’s the worst case?”

“Well, the worst case is the dead storming the motel, but this will allow us to get out quickly.”

“Through the window.”

“And into the car.”

“Well,” says Doug, flopping back onto the first bed. “You’re the expert.” With no electricity aside from their two flashlights, it’s hard to make out the rest of the room, but that’s probably for the best. All motels rooms are identically disgusting, and that’s just from his pre-apocalyptic memory.

He strips down to his undershirt and underwear while Dominik uses the bathroom, and then they trade so Doug can brush his teeth with one of the tubes of toothpaste he stole from Goddard (no one gave him shit about hoarding multiple boxes of toothpaste, which is one of the few nice things about trauma.) Then he stumbles his way back to the bed, and the both of them turn off their flashlights.

“Night,” says Doug.

“Sleep well,” says Dominik.

Doug doesn’t sleep well. He’s not sure how long he lies there for, tired but buzzed on adrenaline, and keeping himself as still as possible as he listens to Dominik’s soft breathing. The room is too cold and the blanket is too light, and it feels like one of those dark days on the shuttle, freezing his body over and over with shriveling hope that someone would find him, losing his hair and nails and nearly his toes, alone and lost, and out of control.

“Doug,” asks Dominik, from across the room. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“I think you were... crying in your sleep.”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” says Doug, too quickly, rubbing his face on the pillow. “I mean.” There’s a rustle of fabric, and then Dominik’s standing next to him with an armful of blanket.

“Budge over,” he says, and Doug is too confused to disagree. Dominik spreads the second blanket over Doug and then slides under the covers, right next to Doug.

“Wait, what?” Doug asks, as Dominik settles in.

“I was cold,” he says, and Doug can hear the smile. “Is… is this alright?”

Well. Doug’s a lot warmer now, but that might be from the flush radiating down his body, and he’s never been gladder for the darkness. He scoots over as far is comfortable to give Dominik more room and mumbles, “Yeah,” because of course it’s alright.

It’s probably too alright.

But Dominik is warm, and here, and breathing softly, and it’s only a few minute longer before Doug falls asleep.


	6. Chapter 6

Doug wakes the first time with an arm around his waist and his own hands gripping Dominik’s shirt, his head buried into Dominik’s chest and tucked under his chin. Their legs—bare under the twisted blankets—are tangled for warmth, and Doug’s too sleep drunk to think anything about the position, just two bodies clinging to each other in the night. Reluctantly, he lets go of the shirt, but he can’t figure out how to unwind himself without waking the other man.

And it’s only up close like this, pressed against him, that Doug notices how tall Dominik is. Gangly, sure, and skinny—though how much of that is part of the Apocalypse Diet, patent pending, he has no idea. But his arm is solid and strong, holding Doug close.

Above him, Dominik makes a soft noise, exhales gently through his nose. Doug closes his eyes and is asleep again within the minute.

Sometime later Dominik pokes him awake, gently tapping his shoulder until Doug rolls onto his back, groaning against the light streaming in from outside.

“What time izzit?” He mumbles, throwing an arm over his eyes.

“Unclear, but sometime in the midmorning. We should get on the road.”

“I’m hitting the snooze button.”

“We’re wasting daylight.”

“Shoulda thought of that before you woke me up without coffee.”

“We’ll hit a grocery store for some instant once we’re on the road. Is that enough to get you out of bed?” Doug groans again, and after a second he throws himself into a seated position, bouncing against the mattress. Dominik is standing next to the bed, already dressed, and he looks like he’s been up for a while, planning their next stretch of their journey on the paper map laid out on the other bed. Doug almost asks why Dominik didn’t wake him up earlier, but the only explanation is that the other man wanted him to sleep more, and that thought gives Doug a feeling that he buries immediately, leaves in the bed under the pillow.

“I once went months drinking coffee made out of seaweed. I would literally kill for instant coffee,” he says instead, and Dominik smiles.

An hour later, when they’re at the grocery store, Doug wishes he hadn’t said that.

He’s fist deep in a box of Froot Loops, leaving a trail of rainbow crumbs behind him and pushing a cart filled with water jugs and other non-perishables. The store is surprisingly not picked over, which is both lucky and disconcerting. Doug shoves another handful of cereal in his mouth and doesn’t think about the people who weren’t able to make it to the store for supplies.

He last saw Dominik looking thoughtfully at the different deodorants, which was adorable as fuck, but when Doug gets back to that aisle he’s not there. Doug pushes the cart to the front of the store and then steps outside to put his face in the sun. They really did get a late start—the sun is already high in the sky—but he can’t help but enjoy the heat, closing his eyes and turning his body like a plant to soak it all in. As much as he hates space, Doug is 100% pro white dwarf stars.

After a minute he opens his eyes, and then he sees them: a group of thirty, maybe forty zombies shuffling down the road towards the store.

“Oh shit,” he says, fumbling for his gun. “Shit. Dominik!” He runs back inside, leaving his cart on the sidewalk, and then hears a gunshot. “Dominik!”

Dominik nearly runs into him. Just behind him is another zombie, dragging itself forward on the floor with its arms. Dominik turns around and shoots it in the head, and then looks past Doug where the zombies are coming up on the parking lot, faster then Doug thought they could move.

“Oh shit,” he says, turning back to Dominik. “What—”

“Doug— Doug _run_.”

Doug runs. He runs and remembers how to run, his legs still weak from space and deprivation, cramping and burning. He only makes it a few yards into the parking lot, halfway to the car before he realizes Dominik isn’t with him.

Dominik is—

God, he’s moving towards the horde, gun raised.

“What the fuck,” he yells, and Dominik doesn’t look back. Doug pulls out his own gun, unlatches the safety, and half jogs back, his lungs burning. Dominik spares him a brief look, a tight frown and eyes hard with worry. He shoots a zombie square in the forehead and it collapses to the ground. “What the fuck,” Doug says again and grabs Dominik’s shoulder. Dominik shoves him off— shoves him _away_ , back towards the car.

“I told you to—”

“Yeah, but you—”

“Doug, get to the car, I’ll—”

“Don’t you fucking say hold them off.”

“GET the car, and pick me up!”

“ _Fine_ ,” Doug growls. “Fucking stupid, but— here.” He shoves his gun over

“No—”

“Can’t drive and shoot,” he calls over, already starting to jog away

The car seems farther this time, and the sharp ring of bullets sound faster than his own footsteps as he drags himself along. He can’t remember why they bothered parking so far away, why the hell they didn’t just pull up to the front of the store. Dominik said something about getting in a workout, and Doug laughed, and if Dominik gets eaten by zombies for that stupid joke Doug’s going to kill him himself.

From the car, Dominik is a speck against the horde, his movements a flicker on the horizon. Doug can barely breathe as he crawls into the front seat and fumbles with the keys, almost drops them twice before he manages to jam them into the ignition and turn the car on.

It feels like the wheels should squeal as he puts his foot on the gas and roars forward but it doesn’t, just a quiet rumble of the engine as Dominik comes back into view, and he’s running, sprinting towards the car, and Doug’s so busy looking at him that he doesn’t notice the soft _thump_ and lurch of the car until it’s over, a body, somebody’s body under his wheels. He doesn’t think at all about who they might have been, and he doesn't look at any of the faces in the mass of bodies streaming towards the van, just narrows in on one.

He yells, “Get in” because he’s always wanted to say that, and there's barely any time for that because Dominik is already in the car yelling, “DRIVE,” legs hanging halfway out the door. Doug drives, just slow enough for Dominik to pull himself all the way in, and then lowers his foot onto the gas, zero to sixty, and they’re off, leaving the dead behind them.

Maybe a mile down the road, when the store is completely out of sight, Doug pulls off to the side, parks, and then lurches out of the car to vomit. Dominik follows him out but stands a few feet away while Doug retches, and when he’s done, spitting rainbow onto the pavement, Dominik passes him a bottle of water.

“Don’t fucking,” Doug pants, squeezing the bottle, “don’t do that again.”

“What?”

“You,” says Doug. “I barely. I’m— I'm baby John Connor, not Sarah. I almost didn’t—”

“Doug—”

“Why didn’t you come with me? You just stayed there—”

“Someone had to—”

“No, they really didn’t. You run faster than me because, _uh_ , everyone can run faster than me. You could have gone for the car and—”

“Left you? I’m not doing that”

“Well why did you— I left you. You _made_ me leave you.”

“Doug—”

“We don’t— I’m not fucking doing that again. We both go for the car. And if I’m slowing you down then you get the car and pick me up. Not the other way around. I’m not doing that again. You don’t get to— You’re not—”

“What?” Dominik asks, and Doug rounds on him, shaking with anger.

“You’re not _her_ ,” he spits. “You’re not my fucking commanding officer, you don’t get to decide what I do, or don’t, or what you—” Doug cuts himself off at Dominik’s stunned face, closes his eyes and slumps back against the car. He opens the bottle of water and takes a few small sips. The water’s warm from sitting in the sun, and it’s not enough to wash the sour from his mouth. He wants some fucking toothpaste.

“Doug,” says Dominik, and it’s almost a whisper. Doug shakes his head but he doesn’t say anything. Neither of them says anything.

After a long stretch of silence, he opens his eyes. He swirls another sip of water around in his mouth, spits, and then looks at Dominik.

“We both go for the car,” he says, and he’d never been great at reading people but he recognizes the emotions flashing across Dominik’s face. None of them are great. “Both of us,” he repeats.

“Okay,” says Dominik.

They get back in the car, Dominik taking his place in the driver’s seat, and Doug back on the passenger side. And then they drive, probably to find another grocery store because all they have left is water and some jerky.

“Terminator?” Dominik asks, and when Doug looks over he says, “Sarah Connor?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t go with ‘ _Come with me if you want to live_.’” Doug quirks a smile at the Schwarzenegger impression.

“Fuck. That would have been good.”

“ _Get to the chopper_?” Doug laughs, and then rolls down the window to get the sun in his face again.

“Hasta la vista, baby,” he mutters against the breeze.

\---

Mississippi is a bust, as like, an entire state, but the river is impressive, even though the bridge they drive over is less than half a mile long. But they only make an hour into Louisiana before the car breaks down. Doug and Dominik stand in front of it, watching some kind of black smoke sputter out of the engine.

“So,” says Dominik.

“So,” says Doug.

“You’re an engineer.” Doug shakes his head

“Cool, so if the radio’s busted I can fix that, and I can hypothetically fix parts of a space station as long as a very patient AI is watching my every move, but I don’t know how to fix a car.”

“Alright,” says Dominik, wiping sweat away from his face. “We’ll find another car and hotwire it.” Doug raises his eyebrows.

“You know how to hotwire a car?” He asks, impressed, and Dominik winces.

“...I thought you might,” he admits.

“I’m a felon, not a— It’s not like we go around the prison swapping trade secrets. Also, I was only technically in prison for a month before trial so I missed the hotwire meeting.”

“I apologize for assuming—”

“No worries, man. I mean, worries, but only because— Now what?” Dominik sighs, and then walks around to the back of the car. Doug follows, and catches the backpack that Dominik throws him.

“We start walking.”

So they walk. And the world is even eerier on foot, with the slow pass of leftover cars and homes and fast food restaurants, strip malls and strip clubs and motels and schools. Doug can’t do the math in his head, but bumblefuck Texas can’t be the only safe haven out there. The university campus, though his memory’s hazy and he’d only been there once or twice, couldn’t hold all the remaining Texans, let alone the entire south. But they’ve passed through three states now, and the only people they’ve seen were dead or undead.

“Where is everybody?” Is a stupid question but he asks it anyway, to break the silence that’s too obvious outside the car. Dominik’s walking with his gun out and Doug's following suit. His pack is heavy and his legs are burning, protesting the movement, but if he stops he knows that's it for the night, and they still have hundreds of miles to cover.

They trek on and Dominik doesn’t answer.


	7. Chapter 7

They make camp somewhere in the middle of Louisiana, when Doug’s legs refuse to walk down another road in search of a house not filled with corpses. He uses the lighter to make a fire, and they pick through the remaining food from their last haul for dinner, and at this point Doug is missing the MREs from the Hephaestus because at least they resembled a meal. As much as he’s never admit it, he’s done with junk food.

Dominik looks just as miserable, fidgeting in his seat around their makeshift camp.

“What?” Doug asks, after a half an hour of this. “Is there something you—”

“Doug, please forgive me for this question, but I’d like you answer as truthfully as you can,” Dominik says quickly.

“Uh,” says Doug. “Okay.”

Dominik wipes his hands on his pants and purses his lips and then says, “Were you and Renée...” He stops and looks expectantly at Doug.

“Me and…” And then Doug chokes on his own breath. “ _Oh_. No. No no. Not that— I mean, was I— yeah, but also, I was the bane of her existence for three years, and— and her to mine too, honestly. The first two years she had a stick so far up her, uh.”

Dominik's just looking at him, and in the glow of the sunset Doug can’t really read his face. He knows his own is burning, flushed and sweaty. He stands up, and then realizes there’s nowhere to go.

“We were at each other’s throats,” he says. “But not in a ‘will they won’t they?’ More of a ‘will they won’t they murder each other,’ at least until things started getting really crazy— And like, I’ve always been attracted to women—people, really—who could kick my ass, so.”

“So.”

“Uh. Anyway. Her no, me probably? But like, there wasn’t any— We were all trying not to die. There wasn’t time for. To really think about that.”

“How do you she didn’t?” Dominik asks, and Doug’s heart drops.

“Esqueeze me?” He manages.

“How do you—”

“Because I know the Commander. Not that you don’t— didn’t. But she wasn’t— She didn’t hide her emotions. And I’m not like, super observant, obviously, but. I knew her. Also— _hey_ —you’re her husband! I’m not like, lying to spare your feelings. I wouldn’t do that.” He’s flapping his lips like a fish and doing gymnastics with his hands and Dominik is just sitting there, listening.

“So you…”

“Yes? Probably? Seriously dude, there wasn’t _time_ to think through anything like that. It was crisis after disaster after cataclysm and nothing about constant, certain death is romantic or sexy. Seriously—what are you trying to get out of this conversation? Like, congrats, I had a crush on your wife, you won this conversation. I don’t—”

“I thought she was dead,” says Dominik, interrupting his ramblings. “They told me— It was near the end of your scheduled mission. March 5th. A man came to my door with an official letter and…” He stands up, and then bends back down to throw another handful of twigs into the fire. “They lied about everything, of course, and it was only after a year that I bothered to be suspicious.”

“There was no way—“

“I didn't want her going in the first place. Every rejection letter from NASA, I thought, _thank god_. And then she goes ahead and signs the Goddard contact without telling me. They didn’t want her talking to me. I’m a journalist, I should have—“

“You figured this out.”

“I didn’t—“ Dominik’s voice cracks then, and Doug crosses over to where he’s standing, hunched around himself. He touches Dominik’s shoulder, gently squeezes his upper arm, and Dominik slowly rights himself.

“And here’s the thing,” says Doug, “knowing Goddard, if you’d figured out any of this shit earlier, they would have killed you. No questions. They’d already fake killed us and we had a knife to our throats the whole time we were up there. Literally.” He keeps touching Dominik, keeping the both of them steady with the grip on his sleeve. “And if— if there’s anything I’ve learned from that hellscape is that. You can’t feel guilty about being alive. For living. For surviving. She sent me back here without my permission and I… seeing you here, I can’t forgive her for it. But she’s not here. She’s.”

He swipes at his eyes with his sleeve, rubbing dirt into his now damp face, and that’s when Dominik cups his chin with both hands and kisses him.

It’s brief, barely a soft press of lips before he pulls back, and when Doug opens his eyes Dominik is smiling down at him. He doesn’t even remember closing his eyes.

It’s one of the few times in his life that he doesn’t know what to say.

“She loved you, Doug,” he says, and when Doug opens his mouth to speak Dominik moves a hand to cover his lips. “It may not have been romantic, though I would suspect it was, but she loved you. I asked you once why she didn’t send herself or either of the others, and I know you still think it was a punishment, but she did it because she loved you. She saved your life, not because she was your commanding officer or out of any sense of misguided guilt, but out of love. Please believe me.” He smiles, and closes his own eyes for a moment. “I know my wife.”

Doug tugs away, a little more aggressively than he means to, but he needs a second. He needs to breathe for a second.

“You kissed me,” he says, shoving his finger into Dominik’s chest.

“I did,” says Dominik.

“You— What the fuck? After— You were just asking me, and— What about Renée? You just got me to admit that I— And then you. What?” Dominik just stays there, smiling stupidly, and Doug thinks he might tear all of the hair off of his head. “What?”

“What?”

“ _Why_? Who, what, where, when, why! You’re a reporter, answer my fucking questions.”

“Well,” says Dominik, “what was a kiss. Who was you. Where is here. When is now. Why? Because you make me laugh. It’s the end of the world and you’re a break in the gloom. You’re a goddamn miracle, Doug Eiffel.” Doug’s jaw, metaphorically and physically, drops.

“Is that a Who Framed Roger Rabbit reference?”

“What?”

“Shut up, the next Walmart we raid—”

And then they’re kissing, for real this time, and Dominik is gentle, frustratingly so, cradling Doug’s face and slowly working his way inside his mouth. Doug’s knees go and he crashes into Dominik, who slowly leads them to ground. Dominik tastes like jerky and stale potato chips, and Doug’s heart is jumping in his throat and he can barely breathe around it. He can hear the roar of his own blood as Dominik nips at his lips, and the answering call of Dominik’s flushed neck.

The sun is rapidly setting over their little campfire, and even in nowhere, Louisiana there’s a light breeze, but that’s not why Doug’s clinging to Dominik, pulling him in tighter to press their dirty clothes together, the scrape of coarse fabric and the rough slide and clang of their weapons.

Doug pulls away first, a little breathless. In the firelight Dominik’s face glows under his askew glasses, a thin sheen of sweat and tears and some inner brightness that terrifies him. Dominik hasn’t taken his hands off of Doug’s face, just lightly stroking his messy beard.

Doug has a lot of questions. Like, _do you actually like me or do you just think I’m funny._ And _do you like me or is this just because the world’s fallen apart._ And _do you like me or are you just sad about your wife because I am also sad about your wife, and I can be fine with this but also I might like you so just let me know_.

Dominik runs a hand up his face and smooths out the wrinkled skin between Doug’s eyebrows.

“I’m no psychic alien, but I can read body language. I’m not sure what I can do to convince you that I’m here not for any reason but my genuine enjoyment of your company, but I certainly hope you’ll let me try.”

“That’s a really fancy way to ask to get me off,” Doug mutters, and Dominik kisses him again.

There’s a desperation to it this time, a _we’re all going to die_ stupidity that has Doug gasping into Dominik’s neck, the gritty tang of his skin days dirty clinging to his teeth as Dominik pulls them together, losing his breath against Doug’s ear. It’s rocks digging into his back and the whisper of zippers, hands seeking skin, as much as they can find, too warm and completely human, the absolute novelty of a pulse thrumming under their fingers.

“Shoulda made a move when we had a bed,” Doug gasps as Dominik takes him in hand. It's all too fast, too much for him to manage, and he lets Dominik take the lead while Doug makes breathy, high pitched sounds into his shoulder.

Dominik can’t say anything but his name; _Doug_ with every soft kiss, _Doug_ with every stroke of his palm, clasping the two of them together until Doug shudders against him and Dominik follows a moment after.

“I hope you don’t—” Dominik says later, when they’re curled up together in a clean patch of grass. Doug abandoned his jumpsuit in exchange for an ill-fitting pair of pants he has rolled up over his ankles, and Dominik donated his jacket as a blanket covering neither of them enough to make a difference. “I’m glad Renée sent you to me. If there was no way to have you both.”

Doug doesn’t respond and just stares into the fire, the low orange flame dancing against the night sky. Even with a star map he wouldn’t be able to find Wolf 359, but he knows the light of the last few years has yet to reach Earth. With his feet in the dirt, he’d be able to watch his trip around the star.

"How am I supposed to take that?”

“There was no version of this where she comes home,” Dominik says softly into the back of his neck. “I knew that when she left. That’s why I fought her on it. If there was an opportunity for her to go out in a blaze of glory, she would find it. If it wouldn’t have been you, it wouldn’t have been her. So, I’m glad it’s you. Is that…”

“Yeah, that’s.” Doug shifts around, dislodging the jacket and turning to face Dominik. He rests his head on Dominik’s chest, nearly the same position they found themselves that morning. “Cards on the table, it’s going to take me longer to forgive her. I don’t regret this, any of this, but I wish. I wish I could have…"

He trails off and Dominik wraps an arm around him, pulling him in closer.


	8. Chapter 8

The next day they find a car with the keys still inside, just a mile from the nearest gas station. It’s almost easy, after that; as easy as things get, here. But in the quiet of the morning's breaking light, they drive on. And then, nearly five days since they left Florida, they cross the Texas border. Less than five hours later, they pull into College Station. It’s only when Dominik puts a hand on his knee that Doug realizes that he’s been shaking, bouncing his legs against the floor of the car.

“Don’t say it’ll be alright,” he says before Dominik can open his mouth. “We still don’t— We made it, that’s all.” Dominik nods and squeezes his leg, and just as he pulls his hand away Doug grabs it. “And, uh. Thank you. For… yeah.”

Dominik laces their fingers together, and lets Doug hold his hand as they pull up to a large concrete wall littered with armed guards, a dozen or so people standing on top of the barrier. Doug gapes up at them. One of them waves them forward, through a large gate set up a few blocks down and another guard in a truck waves for them to follow.

So they follow. Dominik drives them past a golf course torn up and tilled, plants weaving around sand traps and ponds. Their guide leads them a mile down the road to a tall, nondescript building where they park and step out of the car, weapons in hand.

A young woman in a well-worn military uniform meets them with a wave.

“Hi,” she says, as they walk over. “I’m Cadet Jones. Mia Jones. Mia is fine. Could you put those—the guns—away? You don’t really need them in here. Not away, away. Just, like—” She makes a motion of holstering a gun, and he shares a quick look with Dominik before tucking his gun back into his jacket.

“Hey,” says Doug. “Uh, Doug Eiffel, and Dominik Koudelka. Are you in charge?” Mia laughs.

“No way, just the welcome wagon. There’s not really a— Well, we’re still working on the ‘in charge’ thing. We’re kind of a collective?”

“That’s impressive,” says Dominik.

“We really didn’t have a choice,” Mia frowns. “There was no one left to… We just did what we had to.”

“I’m not—” Dominik says quickly. “That wasn’t sarcastic. We’re just happy to have found you.”

“Oh,” says Mia. She runs one hand over the back of her head, like she’s checking the status of the ponytail jutting out of the back of her head. “How did you find us, anyway?”

“The broadcast,” says Doug.

“Oh! Yeah, I totally forgot about that. National Guard set that up before they split.”

“Where’d they go?” Dominik asks.

Mia’s smile drops more and she says, “Great fucking question.”

She takes them inside, up the stairs to a fifth floor office that looks like it used to belong to some kind of literature professor, not the administrative wing of a survivalist colony.

Doug’s essentially, well, a zombie through their entire intake, during the check by a medical team, and half listening to Dominik recap their journey (minus Doug’s space adventure and immunity status.) No one seems to mind or even be surprised at his silence. He’s bet they’ve seen worse.

Inside though, his mind is churning, stomach clenching, and it takes all his effort to keep the vibrations inside of himself. There’s no use processing any of the thoughts that keep floating to the forefront. There’s nothing healthy in letting the hope bubble up now. There’s.

Nope.

Nope.

Focus.

Stay focused.

After maybe an hour, Dominik taps his arm and Doug responds with a startled, “Huh?”

“We’re going on a tour,” says Dominik, gesturing to the open door.

“Oh,” says Doug. “Okay.” He doesn’t get up from the plastic chair, but lets himself blink back to the humid room and take a deep, clearing breath. “And then…”

“It’ll take them a while to comb through their registry,” Dominik says, squeezing his shoulder. “It’s not the most advanced system, so in the meantime they’re going to get us some food.”

“Alright,” says Doug. He holds into the edge of Dominik’s jacket as they walk out, pinching the rough fabric tight between his fingers.

\---

There are a number of apartment complexes on campus, and Mia, who apparently has nothing else to do, takes them around, proudly pointing out the generators and water reclamations and the solar panels they scavenged.

It’s a beautiful day out and people—God, so many people—are out walking around, tending to the gardens and washing clothes by hand. They stop to let a herd of goats pass, and then just off in the distance Doug spots a group of children playing soccer.

He starts moving before he makes the conscious decision to do so, sprinting through a sudden crowd and past Dominik calling his name. By some miracle straight out of the movies, a cliché even he might have mocked, the ball rolls up and bumps against his feet and a little girl runs up to grab it.

And when he sees her clearly, a field of freckles and a mess of black curls collected at the top of her head, Doug collapses to his knees, shaking when he raises a fist and slowly spells “A N N E.”

The girl nods.

Doug points to himself: “I am.”

I am.

And then he’s tackled from the side, wrestled to the ground by a woman yelling at him in Spanish, and he’s laughing even as she drives his face into the grass and her fists rapidly into his back.

“You _pendejo_ piece of shit, you get away from—”

“Hi Kate,” says Doug, into the dirt. Kate rolls off of him, kicks him once as she stands, and when he pulls himself back up to his knees he can hear Dominik shouting after him.

“What the _fuck_ are you doing here? _How_ the fuck—”

Anne pulls on her mother arm, and then they’re signing too quickly for him to follow, not when Dominik only taught him the few signs in the last few hours on the road, but he recognizes "Dad" and "yes" and then Anne is in his arms, squeezing him tightly around the neck and it only takes him a second to remember how to hug her back. Anne is in his arms and he can’t see her through his tears, and she’s crying too, shaking as he rubs tiny circles into her back, " _sorry, sorry, sorry_."

When he finally looks up, both Kate and Dominik are looking down at them with two very different, very complicated faces.

“Hi Kate,” he says again. She glares down at him.

“You’re not forgiven.”

“I know.”

“We thought you were dead.”

“I was. Kinda. It’s a really long story. And you probably won’t believe most of it.”

“Try me,” says Kate,

Anne holds his hand as the four of them walk away from the crowd, the soccer ball tucked under her other arm. Kate leads them to a smaller building only two stories high with a lush vegetable garden out front.

“This is us,” she says, and then signs something to Anne who angrily signs something back one handed, dropping the soccer ball and squeezing Doug’s hand tighter. Kate sighs and then looks back at him.

“I’m telling her we need to talk in private, and she’s saying it’s not like she’ll overhear, and I’m saying her lip reading is much better than she lets on, right Anne?”

“Can you translate for me?” Doug asks. Kate grunts, and Doug leans down to Anne. “Hey, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere. I’m just going inside with your mom to talk about adult stuff and then we’ll come back out.” Anne scrunches up her face and signs something back.

“She says, ‘that’s stupid’.”

“Yeah, I don’t want to do it either. I’d rather stay outside with you and my friend Dominik. Did you know he’s really good at soccer?” Dominik raises his eyebrows a brief second, and then beams when Anne looks over at him.

Inside, sequestered to bright living room on the first floor, he tells her everything, from the moment Cutter approached him through his and Dominik’s journey to Texas. At the end all Kate says is, “I fucking knew it.” Doug blinks at her.

“You… you knew what?”

“ _Pinche_ Goddard Futuristics. They told me you got killed in prison. But I didn’t believe that shit. Not after the money started showing up.”

“Really?”

“Of course not. Oh, so suddenly this corporation wants to give me money for my bills? Like Anne won some sort of scholarship? She was six. We didn’t apply for any scholarship. I had a friend who was able to trace the money back to Goddard, so then I figured they picked you up to do some shit with radios. But I didn’t understand why they were so sketchy about it.” She waves her hand out, gesturing at Doug. “But there we go.”

“Yeah,” says Doug. ““You took the money though?” Kate smirks.

“Of course I took the money. Your stupid ass paid for my PhD.”

“Shit,” he says, surprised. “How much did they…”

“Way too much for it to make any kind of sense. And they wanted to give Anne some kind of experimental surgery—”

“You didn’t—”

“Am I stupid? Of course not. I had to have Ma play all superstitious to get them to back off though.”

“Is Rosie…”

“No. She died two years ago. Before this whole mess, thank god.”

“I’m sorry.” Kate looks at him. “Really, I am. For… for everything.”

“I already said you’re not forgiven. You don’t—” Kate stands up suddenly and stares at a far wall at a row of framed family pictures. “She was so scared. And I couldn’t even tell her what was going on. Thank fuck she could read a little, because I don’t know how… and then _where’s Daddy, Where’s Daddy?_ No baby, Daddy’s in a time out. And then no baby, Daddy’s dead, he’s not coming home, no baby, it was nothing you did, it’s not your fault.” They wait for a minute in the heavy silence, and Doug bites his cheek to keep from tearing up. “I had to plan your funeral because there was no one else to do it. I got a fucking flag for you, like some kind of army widow.”

“Kate—”

“I know, you’re sorry,” she says tightly. “Fuck your sorry.” And then, just as quickly as she stood, she falls back onto the couch and starts laughing, vibrating with hysterical giggles. Doug moves to get up but she waves him off, swiping the tears from her face. “Shit,” she says finally. “Ma would kill me but I honestly think you mean it, this time.”

Doug says, “I always meant it.”

“Never meant it enough to do anything about it before. But here you are, crawling back from the fucking dead like you’re some kind of Douglas the White.”

“Does that make you Frodo?”

“Fuck you,” says Kate. “I’m Aragorn.” She smiles and Doug smiles back.

“God, I missed you,” he says almost reverently. Because even when they weren’t in love he always loved her, hard, and sitting here on her couch, smiling while their daughter plays outside, still seems out of his grasp. But he’s here. They’re all here. It took the end of the world to get here, and he hates that the happiness blooming in chest is at the cost of everything else but he can’t pull the smile off of his face. Not when he’s allowed to have it.

“Yeah,” says Kate, “missing me with tall, dark, and British not so subtly looking through the window every five minutes.”

“That’s… new. He’s, uh, Minkowski’s husband.”

“ _P_ _endejo_.”

“Tell me about it.”

The four of them eat dinner together that night with the first fresh vegetables Doug’s had in years, Anne excitedly telling Doug about her life and her friends while Kate translates, and Doug telling her abridged stories from space, things like talent shows and karaoke and prank wars with Hera. Once in a while he’ll start a story and then pivot after remembering how it ends, or when he runs into a wound too fresh, but Dominik is there to squeeze his hand under the table or cut in with a story of his own to let Doug catch his breath.

Both Doug and Anne are ready to crash by nine, the two of them exhausted by the day, and Kate offers him and Dominik her spare room with a completely unnecessary raised eyebrow. After three bedtime stories and more than twenty promises to still be there in the morning (all translated by Kate, who hovers in the doorway while Doug kneels by Anne’s bed,) Doug showers and changes into clean clothes that Dominik sourced for them earlier.

He’s nearly asleep by the time Dominik makes it to bed, but he pulls the other man to him anyway, holding onto t-shirt as he slips away.

\---

They’re awakened too early the next morning with a siren echoing through the campus, and Doug trips out of bed in his hurry to rush outside where he and Dominik find Kate.

“What’s going on?”

“Look,” she says, and they follow her outstretched arm to a fireball racing across the sky, growing bigger as it approaches them.

“Is that a comet?” Dominik asks.

“No,” says Doug, and breaks into a run. He’s still barefoot, in boxers and a t-shirt, and he can barely hear Dominik and Kate screaming after him. Doug tracks the destination to maybe a mile outside of the concrete wall, and by the time he makes it to the edge there’s already a group gathered, civilians and other cadets, some sleep roused and others still in uniform.

He makes his way to the top of the barrier, and for the most part everyone ignores him, their own attention focused on the shuttle parked just outside their borders.

A door slides open with a mechanical hiss, and they watch in silence as a figure steps out and starts to walk towards them. Around Doug, the sentries raise their guns. The figure stops, and then raises a megaphone.

“Good morning, everyone," he says. "This is Marcus Cutter of Goddard Futuristics and I would be _so_ delighted if you could tell me where I can find Douglas Eiffel.” 

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr @lesbianjackrackham


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